The Third Kingdom (30 page)

This was the same thing Henrik had reported about the attack on the column of troops. Henrik had told him that nothing Zedd or Nicci had done seemed to have had the desired effect. Samantha was now having that same difficulty with her gift. The whirlwind was the most effective thing Samantha had so far conjured, but in the forest, on the run, that kind of thing would do them little good.

He supposed that in a fight, those with the gift instinctively fell back on what they knew. But using her instincts was doing them no good. It was only using up her strength to no effect and slowing them down.

That was why Richard had wanted her to use her ability to make trees explode. Magic didn’t work directly against these unholy half dead, but exterior things, such as his sword, or even a rock to their heads, did work. They could be hurt, but not with magic directly. He had wanted her to make trees explode in order to cut down their attackers. That was how he had figured out magic could be used against them.

But Samantha had tried and she couldn’t do it.

Coming over the top of a rise, Richard lifted Samantha from the ground, spun her around, and set her down behind him out of the way. With both hands now on his sword, his swift blows cut into two men and a woman who rushed in at him. They all fell, clutching gaping wounds to try to hold their insides from spilling out. Richard knew that they would spend hours lying there on the ground, suffering a slow and agonizing death.

When he saw that the forest was getting ever more crowded with mobs of growling men and women closing in from all sides, he turned, looking for something they could use for a defensive position. Defense was not the way to win a battle, but at the moment he was rapidly running out of options.

He pointed with his bloody sword. “There!” he yelled at Samantha. “Get between those rocks! Get back in far enough that they can’t reach you!”

Without question or hesitation, Samantha scrambled to dive into a narrow split in the jumble of ledge jutting up from the forest floor. She was small enough to squeeze way back into the narrow split in the rock. He hoped she could go back in far enough to be out of the reach of all the half people grabbing for her, at least for a brief time, time enough to give him the chance to fight off the closest attackers.

Richard knew, though, that it wouldn’t protect her for long. Defensive action was not going to save them. There were simply too many half people swarming in from all around. It would only be a matter of time before some of the smaller among them squirmed far enough into the split in the rock to be able to reach in, get hold of her, and drag her out. If they did that, they would tear into her with their teeth and eat her alive on the spot.

Richard’s heart pounded with the fear of such a thought. He forced aside the horrific notion, making himself think instead of how to prevent such a thing from happening. He had made a calculated decision to keep her safe, if only temporarily. Now he had to make use of the chance that gave him to turn from defense to offense. Having her crouched back in the protection of the rock gave Richard at least a brief opening to fight off the half people without having to try to keep them off Samantha at the same time.

He knew that fighting off the hordes coming in at them wouldn’t be enough to save them, but it would stall the inevitable while he tried to come up with a better solution. It bought them both a bit of time, that was all. How much depended on him, on how hard he could fight, on how ferocious he could be.

It was already obvious that hacking them to pieces didn’t instill a sense of fear in the half people. They showed virtually no fear of anything. They wanted one thing, and one thing only. There was no way to outrun the half people, so he stood his ground and hacked away at them without pause.

Despite how hard he tried to come up with a solution as he fought, he couldn’t think of anything. He had no time to think, really. It took all his effort to continue to swing the sword, to continue to cut down the packs of people charging in all around him.

Richard stood on the high piece of ground he had staked
out and unleashed the full fury of his anger at the throngs flocking in around him. He used the obstacles close in around him—tree trunks and a projection of rock—to keep his attackers from rushing straight in. He was merciless in the way he hacked apart clusters of people when they rushed in close enough. At the same time, he had to fight over and around growing piles of bloody corpses.

The tightly focused battle was an orgy of slaughter. Limbs, heads, and parts of bodies from men and women alike littered the ground. Some of the fallen, still alive, twitched in shock and agony. The rocky ledge was painted in a grotesque patchwork of viscera, vomit, urine, and blood.

As he fought, Richard had to be careful not to fall over the bodies or slip on the gore as he swung his sword and dodged fearless charges. The ground everywhere was spattered with a red rain. Blood dripped from the tips of leaves on the trees closest in all around and ran down the face of rocks. Severed fingers from people trying to grab the blade of his sword lay scattered over the rock, like fallen red leaves in autumn.

Richard’s arms began to feel as heavy as lead. It was tiring to swing the sword without pause. There was no time to catch his breath. Stopping for any reason would mean certain death.

He remembered the pain caused by the men who had attacked him, the pain of them biting him, trying to tear his flesh off with their teeth. That memory, that fear, that terror of such a gruesome end, not only for himself but for Samantha as well, drove him on with renewed fury.

Bodies and body parts lay in tangled heaps. The people running in to attack were tripping and falling over them before they could even get to Richard. Others were slipping on the blood and gore. Sprawled on the ground, they were all the easier to kill. As the ones still alive scrambled to their feet, they were covered in the blood of those they had fallen among, making it hard for Richard to know who he had cut and
didn’t need to cut again, and who might still represent a threat, so he simply cut any of them within range.

The most they ever did to defend themselves was to lift an arm before their faces. That cost them the arm and then their head. It was ridiculously easy to kill such single-minded half people, but their sheer numbers were going to win out in the end, and then he and Samantha would be the ones butchered.

Richard turned when he heard Samantha suddenly scream in terror. He saw a clot of people crowded in around the narrow opening in the rock, all of them leaning in the opening from every direction at the same time, dozens of arms reaching, hands grabbing at her, trying to get even a fingerhold on her to try to drag her out.

Richard swung the sword in a wild frenzy, severing half a dozen arms at a time as if he were hacking away a thicket of brush. When he had slaughtered all those around the opening to her hiding place, he could see her wide eyes back in the darkness, tears of terror streaming down her face.

She reached out to him, pleading with her open arms, wanting him to come to her.

It was a sight of such abject misery that it nearly broke his heart.

Richard looked out at all the masses of people flooding in toward him from every direction.

There was nothing he could do.

He dove into the split in the rock, over Samantha, covering her, protecting her, with his own body. He put his back to her. He felt her arms close around him, clutching him in tight against her.

Richard pointed his sword outward to try to stall the inevitable as he waited for the end.

Richard felt Samantha’s arms tighten around him.

“I’m sorry” was all he could whisper back over his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Samantha.”

He felt shame for letting himself so easily be talked into allowing her to come along, for how miserably he had failed to protect her, how he had failed Kahlan, failed Naja, Magda, and Merritt’s efforts, failed everyone else who depended on him as the Lord Rahl to be their protector.

He should have never agreed to bring Samantha. She was one of the watchers. She was supposed to warn others. She had done that. She was not meant to fight the evil she was born there to warn others of.

He was supposed to be the one to end prophecy and end the threat. It was his responsibility, not hers.

Zedd had always told him to think of the solution, not the problem. He tried, but this time he had no solution. He had failed. He wanted to think that sometimes there simply wasn’t a solution, but that would be absolving himself of responsibility, when it had been his responsibility. To think there was no solution was to surrender.

It was to come to nothing, though. Despite how hard he tried, he could think of no solution, and he couldn’t fight any
harder, couldn’t fight off such an overpowering mass of half people all wanting to rip him and Samantha apart and steal their souls. Not even Zedd, Nicci, Cara, Cara’s husband, Ben, the general of all those elite troops of the First File, had been able to hold off such overwhelming numbers.

Still, that was no excuse. He was the Lord Rahl. In the end it didn’t really matter that they failed. It only mattered if he failed.

Richard watched out through the opening in the rock. He could see all the hands reaching back into the darkness for him. Fingers clawed the air, trying to catch hold of his clothes. Some of them grabbed the sword instead, and lost those fingers.

He could see the shapes of hungry mouths growling with sick need. They bared their teeth for the task for which they so desperately lusted, for the taste of human flesh.

It was all coming to an end before his journey of rescue had even begun. They hadn’t even made it beyond the outskirts of Stroyza. The hadn’t even made it safely across the fields and into the forest.

“Don’t be sorry,” Samantha whispered back from the darkness behind him. “Don’t be sorry, Lord Rahl. You had the idea. It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”

“What?”

Samantha put her hand on the top of his head and pushed it lower. “Keep your head down,” she whispered as if from some distant, dreamlike place.

Richard frowned and was about to ask her what she was talking about when her small fingers tightened on his head, keeping it down.

And then the ground suddenly shook with a thunderous explosion.

An instant later a deep shock wave hammered his chest. He couldn’t make out its source.

Three more deafening explosions came in rapid succession, almost on top of one another. The earsplitting cracks of the detonations were like lightning hitting a tree right beside him. Each booming blast made him flinch. The explosions being so close left his ears ringing.

There was a brief moment of silence before another series of explosions, only there were more this time. All around the wallop of explosions shook the ground like a thunder and lightning storm gone crazy. The staggering concussions, one on top of another in rapid succession, sent shock waves ripping through the air. They shook the ground so powerfully that it made his head hurt. Dirt and small rocks rained down.

Again there was a preciously brief pause in the deafening thumps, and then the thunderous explosions erupted again, coming so close on top of one another that it reminded him of the sound of canvas ripping.

After the briefest of pauses, another series of explosions began, the echoing booms in a measured pace, one right after another, like some celestial blacksmith hammer raining down mighty blows on the anvil of the world. The very air shook with the power of those blows.

Then Richard heard clattering against the rock over his head as a rain of debris began falling. Some of it struck the rock with astounding violence. Other sharp impacts sounded like the crack of a whip. Some of it sounded like it might fracture the rock over his head.

And then pieces of wood began cascading down. Splinters of wood, some no bigger than sewing needles, pelted him while other pieces as big as oars crashed into the rock, bouncing back into the air to eventually come raining down all around. Richard saw that many of the pieces were covered in blood. Some even held skewered pieces of mangled flesh.

He could hear tree limbs under great weight snap in rapid succession, then the sound of massive trunks fracturing as
trees crashed down through the forest canopy. The colossal trees shook the ground when they hit. The rumbling sound of trees toppling to the ground boomed all around them.

One of the enormous trunks smashed down with a jarring impact onto the rock they were cowering in. Richard thought that the rock might shatter from the blow. Instead, the impact of the great weight snapped the trunk in half above where Richard and Samantha crouched. Trees in the forest all around upended, ripping great limbs off as they fell. The ground shook with loud, booming blasts that reverberated through the woods.

As the tumultuous explosions continued at an unabated pace, the detonations moved ever outward, ever farther away, the ground shaking with each powerful blow until it all joined together to feel like an earthquake. It felt powerful enough to bring down mountains.

It seemed like it went on forever, but Richard knew that it had all happened in a mere moment in time, a thunderous, violent, murderous moment that had ripped through the forest with incredible brute force and merciless violence.

Almost as soon as they had started, the explosions came to an abrupt end.

Though the explosions stopped, trees continued to fall, each giant monarch snapping limbs of other trees on the way down, even splintering the trunks of neighbors that in turn were knocked over. Richard could hear the muffled sound of roots popping under the tremendous pressure as toppled trees fell against others. The ground shook with the impact when each one finally came to ground.

Giant splinters still rained down for another long moment. Tree trunks cracked in long ripping splits before they came crashing down. Gradually, the noises of all the destruction came to an end as one last tree smashed down not far away, making the ground rumble.